Electronic directories have become an indispensable tool for many. Users utilize electronic directories at home and in the workplace to determine a contact's postal and email address and telephone number. A problem confronting users of conventional electronic directories is locating a contact that is not in the user's current contacts list.
The contact may not exist in the user's contacts list for various reasons. For example, the contact may be someone to whom the user has never previously addressed an email. Also, the user may utilize multiple email accounts on different email systems, and although the contact is available from one of the user's accounts, the contact is not available from the user's other accounts.
Conventional applications offer various means for searching for contacts. For example, a user within an organization can generally access a global address list. The global address list may provide a list of all users on a network. However, conventional global address lists do not generally include information related to persons external to the organization.
Conventional means exist for conducting other searches. For example, many white/yellow pages and find-a-person web sites exist on the Internet. These sites provide a user with the capability to enter basic search criteria and perform a search to ascertain an individual's or a company's email address, postal address, and telephone number. But these sites are not comprehensive and, often, the same search executed on different web sites will yield very different results.
Users may utilize additional directory resources as well. For example, many organizations provide lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) directories. LDAP directories may comprise hundreds, thousands, and even millions of entries. For example, Bigfoot Communications, LLC currently provides an LDAP-accessible directory on its Bigfoot.com web site, which, according to the company, includes over 35 million entries.
To utilize an LDAP directory, the user must know the location of the LDAP directory and may need to know additional information as well, such as the user name and password necessary to access the directory. Also, the user may receive a large number of results from an LDAP directory when the search criteria includes a common name; the user may have no way to efficiently and accurately determine which of these entries is that of the desired contact.
Another conventional directory searching approach is the implementation of a regional or national infrastructure to consolidate various directories. For example, RFC 2967 describes a technical infrastructure for Swedish directory access gateways (TISDAG).
Internet standards-related specifications are published as part of the “Request for Comments” (RFC) series of documents. This archival series is the official publication channel for Internet standards documents and other publications of the Internet Engineering Standards Group (IESG), Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and Internet community. The RFC series of documents on networking began in 1969 as part of the original ARPA wide-area networking (ARPANET) project. RFCs cover a wide range of topics in addition to Internet Standards, from early discussion of new research concepts to status memos about the Internet.
RFC 2967 describes a system that provides a single access point for information relating to all Internet users in Sweden. The TISDAG provides a user with the ability to use various client applications to search Whois and LDAP directories of participating Internet service providers. Whois is a directory service containing Internet name and protocol address information.
A disadvantage of the TISDAG and similar approaches is that a complex infrastructure is required before a user can search for a contact. Also, only Internet users' email addresses are available within the system. If the user wishes to contact an internal network user, the user must use the internal contacts or global address list instead.
Also, no lists in a non-standard format may be searched from the TISDAG or similar system. Also, the directory may not be comprehensive because it comprises only the directories of participating Internet service providers. A user must utilize multiple interfaces if the contact is not present in the TISDAG system.